The Fall of Man

The Reason For The Fall of Man

Adam & Eve broke the first commandment by
acknowledging the existence of other gods.

Hortatory, 21

Irenaeus of Lyons

c.115-202

Being mere children Adam and Eve were easily
deceived by the Devil

Heresies 5.16.2; 4.40.3

Clement of Alexandria

c.150 - c.215

Lust

Miscellanies 3.17.103

Tertullian

c.160-c.225

Adam obtained wisdom before he was given permission
to do so by God.

Pallium, 3

John Chrysostom

374-407

Gluttony

Matthew, Homily 13.2

Jerome

347-419/420

Gluttony

Jovinian 2.15

The early church was far from unanimous in its understanding
of how the fall of man came about as Table 4.1 shows.
Somewhat anachronisticly Justin taught that Adam and Eve were expelled from
Paradise because they failed to keep the first commandment (Exodus 20:3), that
is, they acknowledged the existence of other gods.(1) Irenaeus
held that Adam and Eve, being mere children(2) they were not
truly responsible for the fall, the blame for which is laid at the Devils
door.(3) By claiming that it was Adam who was deceived by the
serpent Irenaeus ignored the statement by the apostle Paul that it was Eve who
was deceived, not Adam in 1 Timothy 2:14. He also added to the account by
informing us that the angel fell when he tempted man. Adams
disobedience is the source of the general sinfulness and mortality of
mankind, as also of their enslavement to the Devil.(4)
Ephrem the Syrian later rejected the idea that Adam and Eve were created as
children as a pagan belief.(5) According to Clement of
Alexandria, Adam fell because of lust, possibly because Adam and Eve
anticipated the time fixed by God for their marriage.(6)

Commenting on the absence of the words and God saw
that it was good from the account of the second day of creation (Gen. 1:
6-8) Jerome took this to mean:

...that there is something not good
in the number two, separating us as it does from unity, and prefiguring the
marriage tie. Just as in the account of Noahs ark all the animals that
enter by twos are unclean, but those of which are uneven numbers is taken are
clean.(7)

What other explanation is possible, Jerome continues, given
that all the Hebrew texts and Greek translations agree that the words are
missing?(8) Sexual activity, if not actually the cause of the
Fall, was certainly a result of it.(9) The actual cause of the
Fall also receives an ascetic interpretation: it was because by gluttony!(10) In this Jerome succeeds in making the results of
Adams sin sound like the consequences of expulsion from a monastery. It
need hardly be said that Jerome considered the monastic life was the ideal that
God had intended for man since the beginning.

I will first point out that Adam
first received a command in paradise to abstain from one tree though he might
eat the other fruit. The blessedness of paradise could not be consecrated
without abstinence from food. So long as he fasted, he remained in paradise; he
ate, and was cast out; he was no sooner cast out than he married a wife.(11)

Taking the ascetic interpretation of the fall to an extreme
John Chrysostom argued that gluttony, as evidenced by a neglect of fasting, lay
behind not only the fall of Adam, but also brought about the flood and the
destruction of Sodom.(12)

Key: X indicates
agreement with view

 F.R. Tennant, The
Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin. (New York: Schocken
Books, 1968), 273-342.

Table 4.2 gives an summary of the
opinions of the early church fathers regarding the original state of Adam and
Eve. However, the situation is more complicated than this might indicate. By
the time of Augustine there were at least three views evident in the literature
of the Church:

Adam was created immortal. This was the majority
view, held by Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Methodius,
Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom.

Adam and Eve were created mortal and were to become
immortal after a period of probation in the garden. This view was held by
Theophilus of Antioch. Augustine held to a variation of this view in which the
bodies of Adam and Eve, though created mortal, were preserved from decay and
lustful desires by being able to feed on the Tree of Life. Exclusion from the
Tree of Life after the Fall therefore resulted in human death. Had Adam and Eve
not fallen they would have received what we know as resurrection bodies.

Mortality is part of Gods plan and is not a
direct result of the Fall. This view was held by Clement of Alexandria and
Theodore of Mopseustia.

Inasmuch as Origen believed that the taking on of
physical bodies was the result of a souls falling away from God it is not
possible to fit his theology into the above classifications. Of the remainder
only Clement of Alexandria and Theodore of Mopseustia held that human death was
part of Gods plan before the Fall. F.R. Tennant notes that by the fourth
century the belief that Adams sin was the cause of human mortality was
practically universal.(13) Although Davis A.
Young presents Augustines view, that man was created mortal, as one that
modern Christians should emulate (in order to accommodate the theory of
evolution),(14) on the basis of the above survey there seems
to be little support for this in the writings of the other church fathers.

Adams Salvation

Jewish writers held that Adam was saved after the Fall.(15) Christian writers have little to say about the subject,
except for Irenaeus of Lyons, Hippolytus and Epiphanius of Salamis. Writing
about the alleged heresies of Tatian Irenaeus accuses him of
denying that Adam was saved - a heresy which Tatian seems to have
coined.(16) (Hippolytus and Epiphanius seem to have relied on
Irenaeus for their information in making the same claims.(17)) The obvious inference from this is that the orthodox
position from fairly early in the history of the Church must have been that
Adam was saved after the fall. Otherwise Irenaeus would have been unable
to class the denial of Adams salvation as heresy because there is no
direct scriptural support for either position. It may well be that this
doctrine was considered important because it countered Gnostic teaching to the
contrary.

Human Longevity

According to Lactantius Adam lost his immortality when he
disobeyed in Eden,(18) after which his life span was reduced
to a thousand years. Lactantius points out that the Roman scholar Varro (116-27
BC) knew that in ancient times men were said to have lived for this span. To
get around the difficulty Varro had attempted to argue that a year
in ancient Egypt is equal to a month in first century BC. Lactantius shows that
such reasoning is flawed by means of a simple calculation. In the Scriptures
men lived for over a thousand years, yet if a year equals a 1st
century month, then even a man who lived only 100 years lives for 1 200 months,
and in Lactantius time some men lived up to 120 years! Lactantius
explains Varros shortening of the year to a month as being because of his
ignorance of the cause of mans reduced life span - namely the account of
the Fall in Genesis 3.(19) Jerome also accepted that Adam
lived for over 900 literal years, as did many people before the Flood.(20)

For Augustine antediluvian longevity recorded in Scripture
served a useful apologetic purpose. It explained how the human population could
rise so quickly.(21) He notes the ingenious ways in which
some attempted to explain away the long life spans, suggesting years of
different lengths or dividing the spans by ten. No, he writes, the years were
for the antediluvians the same as they are for us (the time of one revolution
of the sun),(22) as are lunar months and 24 hour days.(23)
Some also questioned the age at which the antediluvians were recorded as having
their first child. Augustine suggests two explanations:

Either sexual development was then
later, in proportion to the greater length of the whole life, or (and this, in
my view, is more probable) it is not the first-born children who are mentioned
here, but those needed for the order of succession to arrive at Noah.(24)

Cain & Abel

Some Jewish writers held that Cain was the offspring of Eve
and Satan (in the guise of the Serpent).(25) This view is
described by early Christian writers as one of the teachings held by a number
of sects that they regarded as heretical and utterly rejected it.(26) Today it persists still in certain occult and Satanist
circles as well as amongst the followers of William Marrion Branham
(1909-1965),(27) who taught it as an advanced revelation from
God.(28)

Where Did Cain Get His Wife?

Most of the what we consider to be the difficult texts of
the Bible proved to be problems for the ancients as well. We are not the first
Christians to have faced with the question of where Cain got his wife from (cf.
Gen. 4:17). John Chrysostom answered the question over 1,600 years ago:

But perhaps someone will say: How
is it that Cain had a wife when Sacred Scripture nowhere makes mention of
another woman? Dont be surprised at this dearly beloved: it has so far
given no list of women anywhere in a precise manner; instead, Sacred Scripture
while avoiding superfluous details mentions the males in turn, though not even
all of them, telling us about them in rather summary fashion when it says that
so-and-so had sons and daughters and then he died. So it is likely in this case
too that Eve gave birth to a daughter after Cain and Abel, and Cain took her
for her wife. You see, since it was in the beginning and the human race had to
increase from them on, it was permissible to marry their own sisters.(29)

Answering the old chestnut about how the descendants of Adam
found wives he writes:

After the first sexual union
between the man, created from dust, and his wife, created from the mans
side, the human race needed, for its reproduction and increase, the conjunction
of males and females, and the only human beings in existence were those who had
been born from those two parents. Therefore, men took their sisters as wives.
This was, of course, a completely decent procedure under the pressure of
necessity, it became completely reprehensible in later times, when it was
forbidden by religion.(30)

Although he does not mention the issue of Cains wife
specifically Methodius also notes that brother-sister marriages were
permissible before the time of Moses.(31)

Commenting on Cains city (Gen. 4:17) Augustine answers
those who question how one man could achieve such a task, as, according to
Scripture, only three men were alive when he established it. The solution is
straightforward: Scripture does not give a complete list of all those born.(32)

(9) Jerome, Jovinian
1.16 (NPNF, 2nd series, Vol. 6, 359): And as regards Adam and Eve
we must maintain that before the fall they were virgins in Paradise: but after
they sinned, and were cast out of Paradise, they were immediately
married.

(31) Methodius, Chastity
2.1 (Musurillo, 49): Certainly, Theophila, I think that you have
clearly and adequately discussed these points, working with a sure grasp on the
words of the sacred text as they stand. For it is a precarious procedure to
disregard utterly the actual meaning of the text as written, particularly in
the book of Genesis which contains Gods immutable decrees on the
constitution of the universe. See also Chastity 3.4 (Musurillo,
61).